Launch of the Platform for Biodiversity, Ecosystem Monitoring and Research in South Ecuador
(25.10.13) The platform for biodiversity, ecosystem monitoring and research was launched in Cuenca in South Ecuador on 16 October. The platform is funded jointly by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) and its Ecuadorian partner organisation Secretaria Nacional de Educación Superior, Ciencia y Tecnología e Innovación (SENESCYT). The ceremony was attended by approximately 80 guests from the fields of science and the environment, from the public and from diplomatic circles.
The Ecuadorian Minister for the Environment, Lorena Tapia, emphasised in her address that cooperative research on the platform would make an essential contribution to Ecuadorian environmental policy and at the same time draw attention to the huge biodiversity of Ecuador. Welcoming the guests, the German ambassador, Dr Alexander Olbrich, highlighted the work of two DFG Research Units in South Ecuador which had already made fundamental findings relating to biodiversity on a scale that few other locations in the world could boast – many years before the platform was set up.
Launch of the platform, address by Dr. Dietrich Halm, Director at the DFG Office Latin America
© ETAPA EP
Dr. Dietrich Halm, Director at the DFG Office Latin America, emphasised that in parallel with the research cooperation established for this purpose, collaboration between the DFG and the SENESCYT had developed to the extent that in May 2012 an agreement to fund joint research projects had been signed by the DFG and SENESCYT in Berlin. The 'plataforma', he continued, were international reference points for research and data concerning the impact of the changes in the global climate on the processes, functions and services surrounding highly sensitive and highly diverse ecosystems and it was therefore particularly meaningful to approve transfer projects for implementing methods and results which would make an active contribution to developing sustainable ecosystem use.
Platform launch. From left to right: Dr. Alexander Olbrich, German Ambassador; Dr. Paul Granda López, Mayor of Cuenca; Lorena Tapia, Minister of the Environment for Ecuador; Prof. Dr. Jörg Bendix, University of Marburg, German spokesperson for the platform; Ximena Amoroso, SENESCYT, Department of Science and Technology
© ETAPA EP
In 1997, a small group of German researchers funded separately by research grants from the DFG began to investigate the hugely diverse mountain rain forests in southern Ecuador. From 2001 the first DFG Research Unit operated on a significantly larger scale under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Erwin Beck, University of Bayreuth. A second Research Unit was launched in 2007 under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Jörg Bendix, University of Marburg. Over the years, cooperation with Ecuadorian partners has gradually been extended to include the Universidad Tecnica Particular de Loja, the Universidad Nacional de Loja, the Universidad de Cuenca, the Universidad Católica de Quito, the foundation Nature and Culture International and the environmental services provider ETAPA.
For SENESCYT and the DFG the platform project marks a new cooperation phase with both organisations funding joint German-Ecuadorian projects for the first time in parallel and on a larger scale.